


Punching the Sky

by Altaire



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6960724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altaire/pseuds/Altaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All she had to do was punch through the sky, then find herself among the stars.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>{A series of one shots for a MCU Captain Marvel adaption}</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Human

_Even as a little girl, Carol Danvers had always dreamed of flying. She was that little girl who ran so fast she fell down. Because there was that instant, a fraction of a second before the world caught hold of her again, a moment when she had outrun every doubt and fear she’d ever had about herself and she flew._

_In that one moment, every little girl flies._

_She was always searching for that. Like taking a car into the desert to see how fast it could go. She needed to find that edge of her. And maybe, if she flew far enough, she would be able to turn around and look at the world, and see where she belonged._

— 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Most children would cringe if their father’s addressed them in that sort of tone. But Carol had never exactly been normal in that regard. Her hand only grasped the pen tighter as she continued to write, forcing the words onto the page even harder. 

“What does it look like?” Her voice was steady, but man was she building up to an explosion. “I’m filling out an application.”

“Application for what?”

Carol replied before he’d even finished speaking. “College.” What else.

His only reply was to reach over her and snatch the application off the table. She tried to make a grab for it, but was just an inch too slow. “Hey!” Carol shot up from the chair. Joseph Danvers was a tall, built man, and while his daughter hadn’t exactly inherited his size, she certainly was tall. “What do you think you’re doing?”

It never mattered how much she grew, her father would always look down on her. 

“I’m going to go give this,” he held up the paper, now crumpled in his fist, to drive the point home, before continuing, “to your brother. Steve is going to college, so he needs this. Not you. Why do you even bother Carol? You know that we can only afford to send one of you kids to college.”

The blonde tossed the pen onto the table behind her, crossing her arms, back straight, chin held high as she responded, voice totally flat, “I do know that. I also know that you should be sending me.”

“No.”

No. That was it. With one simple word, he was going to crush all of her dreams. And for what? Because she was a girl.

“Why not? Why not send me?” With every word, her voice was rising. Everyone in the house could certainly hear her now. Maybe even the neighbors before long. Good. Let them. “I’m the oldest! I have better grades than Steve! Or Joe! I work harder than them, and I do better than them! My teachers said I could get into any school I want! I could…”

She could become an astronaut. But Carol didn’t dare say it out loud. Her father would just laugh. He didn’t believe that women could fly. 

Unfortunately, her slight hesitation was all he needed. “You’re not going. Your brother is, and that’s the end of it.” Unlike Carol, his voice was calm, dangerously steady, but there was an edge to it that made his point perfectly clear. Don’t argue. “Girls don’t need to go to college Carol. You graduate high school, then find a husband. He’ll take care of you.”

“No.” This time the word came from Carol’s mouth.

“Young lady…”

“Don’t call me lady.”

“I already told you…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Carol interrupted him again. She must have a death wish or something. “Don’t pay if you don’t want to. That’s fine. But I’m still going. Try and stop me.” She left the challenge hanging, turning around and dashing through the kitchen door, up the stairs and into her bedroom. She didn’t bother to retrieve the application from his hand, that school was worthless if he wouldn’t pay.

Her hands were still shaking, from rage as well as the injustice of it all, as she reached into her backpack, pulling out the stack of paper she’d gotten from the guidance counselor that morning. Carol spent a few moments thumbing through all the applications, searching until she found the one she wanted. One that didn’t require any sort of financial support from her father. 

The United States Air Force Academy. 

Women could fly. Carol Danvers was here to prove it.

—

Before they let you fly, they first had to ground you.

At least, Carol assumed that was the idea. Why else would the Air Force Academy have such a long list of ridiculous rules for her bedroom? She was going to need a tape measure to make sure all her clothes were folded to the right dimensions, to the millimeter. And a steamer to make sure her bed was perfectly made, without any wrinkles. At this rate, Carol was going to have to sleep on the floor to make sure her bed stayed proper. 

They even had limits on decoration. One model, it said on her nifty little list. That had really irked her, since it meant that her impressive Star Wars collection had to stay home, instead of being carted all the way to Colorado. She had only been allowed to bring one thing. It had taken days of indecision before the blonde had finally chosen. When they said model, they probably expected some sort of plane. Carol supposed the Millennium Falcon sort of fit that description. 

Her backpack sat next to the desk, easily the least organized thing in the room, randomly stuffed full of books and clean notebooks. They’d all be filled before long. Thankfully, they hadn’t given her rules on how to pack her backpack yet, but Carol wouldn’t be surprised if they arrived soon. She already had rules on how to carry it. Hint, it wasn’t on her back. 

Nope. In another form of training she didn’t quite understand, the backpack had to be in her hand, as she ran. Apparently freshmen couldn’t walk when they were outside. It was a running sort of gig, only stopping to salute any superior officer she passed. Good news, she was inferior to pretty much everyone. So lots of breaks. 

Seriously. These people were nuts. But they were going to teach her how to fly.

“Hey recruit!” She whipped around, only to find herself looking at an older student in her doorway. Must have snuck up on her while Carol was examining her dorm. “Get it together! You’re late!”

“Late for what?” She demanded.

“Your meeting time! ETA five minutes ago!”

Blue eyes quickly scanned the paper with the rules. “Not according to this.” Carol waved the paper before him.

“Welcome to the academy Lady, if I say it was five minutes ago…”

“Don’t lady me!”

“It was five minutes ago! Now get moving…” His eyes had settled on her model, “Chewbacca.”

Well, at least it wasn’t lady. As nicknames went, Carol could think of a lot worse than being a Wookiee.

—

“Alright! We’re at ten thousand feet! Who wants go to first?”

The instructor was yelling. He had to, the wind was taking his words and pulling them out the door before he could even finish them. The sound would fly in the air. She was just going to fall.

Everyone but the instructor was pale as a sheet, not a soul wiling to volunteer. Carol took a deep breath, but she couldn’t will herself to speak, much less at the volume required for anyone to hear. Instead, she just stood up, white knuckled fingers gripping the handles as she worked her way up to the door.

Man that was a long fall. The Earth below looked like some children’s play toy, like she could just reach down and pick up a house between two fingers. But Carol knew in reality she was the one who was tiny. 

“You ready Chewie?”

Somehow the name had caught on. Even the teachers knew her call sign. Everyone had one by now, and while some had changed over time, hers had stuck since the first day. Carol gave him a thumbs up, unable to break her gaze from the land below. 

“Get going then!”

Before he had even finished speaking, Carol was moving, thrusting herself backwards while still holding onto the railings, then quickly switching momentum to throw herself forward, hurling herself out of the plane and into the open air.

For a moment she was floating, then gravity took hold and she was yanked downwards, falling at terrific speeds. Her hair was ripped out of its bun, blonde strands flying out behind her as Carol tumbled towards the earth. She was probably only falling for a few seconds, but it felt like hours, her perspective switching so ti felt like she was standing still, while Earth rushed up to meet her.

The feeling was so electrifying she almost forgot to pull the chute. 

Thankfully Carol remembered, a hard yank on the cord releasing the billowing fabric that lifted up behind her, harness biting into her shoulders, chest, and hips as the parachute caught her.

The rest of the way down was just a casual glide, floating back to the ground. In the movies they all landed like it was no big deal, alighting on their feet and flouncing away. Even the older students she’d seen skydiving had done it. Carol wasn’t near as graceful, hitting the ground with a jerk that sent a shock through her entire body, landing in a heap on the ground, entangled in the parachute. 

She couldn’t care less. Laying on her back in the field, staring up at the bright, endless blue above her, bruised, wind burnt, blonde hair impossibly tangled, and so very alive, Carol Danvers laughed. 

—

“Eject Chewie! Eject!”

That was ground control, yelling in her ear through the radio. Carol ignored them, teeth gritted as she clung to the throttle, gravity pulling her in a very wrong direction as she spun. And spun. And spun. 

“Come on. Stop. Stop.”

All of her wingmen were in her ear now too, yelling the same thing. Eject.

A flat spin. Pilot’s nightmare. Spinning on its belly on a normal axis. Unrecoverable. Have to eject. The plane was doomed. 

Carol knew all the statistics. She knew all the facts. But for some reason, the pilot was still inside the cockpit, trying to save her damn plane anyway. It was a stupid decision, probably one that would get her killed, but Carol was doing it anyway. 

“Dammit Major Danvers! Eject!” It was her commanding officer now. Perfect. The whole damn base was probably watching her spin in circles now.

“SHUT UP!” Carol yelled, then switched the radio off. She was going to be in so much trouble if she survived this.

She just had to calm down, as calm as anyone could be when they were probably about to die through their own stupidity, and think the physics through. To break herself out of the spin, she had to change how gravity was effecting the jet. And there was only one thing Carol could really move.

Herself. 

Now she was really going to die. Unstrapping herself from the seat, the Major forced herself up into the very front of the cockpit, fighting the force trying to shove her to the right, shoving repeatedly on the front of the plane in a vain attempt to rock it forward and shift its momentum. One… yeah, because no one had ever tried this before… two… was it even possible to be more screwed than she was right now… three… there was about a one in a million chance of this working… four… a rock. The plane rocked!

Carol was thrown to the left now, scrambling to get back into the seat as the plane stopped spinning, and started diving straight to the ground. That at least, was something she was perfectly capable of handling. 

“What was that you said about ejecting?” There was a certain swagger to the blonde’s voice as she hopped out of the plane, smiling widely amid cheers from everyone on the tarmac. 

“That was a stupid move Danvers. You’re lucky it worked. Congratulations.” That was all the Colonel bothered to say before he walked off.

“Typical.” Carol rolled her eyes. “Think of how much money I just saved the government, and he’s grumbling because I didn’t follow orders.”

“Only the first person who does something is ever famous for it. And you’re the second. Snooze you lose Carol.” For all his downing words, her lieutenant was grinning like none else.

“Second? What do you mean second?”

“To make it out of a flat spin. Some guy down south beat you to it, first one to make it out and save the plane. They’ll always remember him. You’ll just get reprimanded for not following orders.”

Carol just shrugged. She might not have been the first person to do it, but she’d still done the impossible, and the major had the plane to prove it. 

—

It was just Danvers now, no Chewie. The CIA were way more serious than the Air Force could ever be. All the hard work and none of the play. The only upside was, Carol now lived in a place where no one gave a damn about how clean her room was. Or how much Star Wars paraphernalia she kept there. She did miss her call sign though… maybe she’d get a cat and name it Chewie. 

She was doing good work here though, Carol’s natural flare for intelligence work was what had convinced them to transfer her in the first place.

There people were just so uptight, quick and efficient with single minded determination. Carol sighed, wandering over to the window in the office and gazing up at the sky. Cloudy. Probably windy. Looked like a storm was coming in. Not that it mattered, since she was stuck inside anyway. Oh how she missed flying.

Carol just needed to do something, something to make her feel alive again. As a spy she spent too much time being someone else. Sometimes she just missed being herself. 

Maybe she had to go back to the basics. The Air Force basics. The blonde turned around, leaning against the window now, just as the perfect target walked by. Typical office paper pusher with a stick up his ass. Scheduled regimen for his day. One that he stuck to. Religiously. All day, every day. For years. It was a common theme for people working at the CIA. How they weren’t bored out of their minds, Carol couldn’t determine. 

They deserved something interesting to brighten up their day.

Carol went and pulled out a knife from her desk, a handy little switchblade. Yes, she kept a knife in her desk. No, it was not at all uncommon for people at the CIA. Wandering up behind her mark, Carol pretended to trip, falling right into his back. Her hands were already at work as they fell, finding the seam of those perfectly pressed and ironed pants and inserting the blade, gently pulling it upward until they hit the ground. Then the knife was gone, hidden in her pocket.

Apologizing profusely, Carol got up, pulling the man up with her, rambling on about how she was a klutz, and how it was all her fault and something about buying him a coffee. No idea how that came out. Then she walked back the way she came, sneaking peeks backwards at the underwear he was now showing off to the world, stifling her giggles. The guy wore briefs. What was he? Ten? It was a childish trick, but she was certainly having fun.

All the other employees were too polite to say anything, but there was hidden laughter all around. And for the first time since she’d come to the CIA, Carol Danvers was grinning.

—

“Mission control to Warbird. Control to Warbird. Come in. You’re supposed to be guarding the rocket, Carol, not staring at it!”

The angry voice in her ear finally broke through to her brain, befuddled and off in space as it was. Too bad her body wasn’t going to space too, unlike the lucky bastards in that rocket ship. “Warbird to control, everything’s all secure down here on the ground.”

Honestly, after being called Chewie for so long, Carol couldn’t say Warbird with a straight face. It sounded too pretentious. It just sounded wrong. She supposed, after that last CIA mission, it was a well-earned name, but Carol didn’t want to remember that mission, much less walk away from it with a brand spankin’ new call sign. That horror show was why she’d pulled this transfer in the first place. 

Basically, the spy life wasn’t really her thing, and Carol had seen the word NASA, and she’d jumped before really even thinking it through, or even reading the damn job description. As a little girl she’d always dreamed of flying, and she’d done that. But the best dreams were always the ones where she never stopped, going up and up and up, until eventually she punched right through the sky and found herself out among the stars. She’d wanted to be an astronaut. 

The closest she could seem to get was ground security. 

In a way, that was even worse, standing off to the sides, spending most of her time in spitting distance from a rocket, just outside the glass from everything she’d ever dreamed about. Then there were days like today, when she could watch the rocket launch from afar, always trying to picture what it would be like to actually be up there. 

Her job was just to make sure no idiot civilians snuck inside to get themselves killed watching a rocket, then get the hell out of the way herself. Those engines kicked up some heat. 

With everything on the ground secure, Carol made her way up to Mission Control herself, to watch the launch on the big monitors. Technically, she didn’t need to be there, but after a couple months at NASA, no one tried to deny her entrance. They all knew exactly how envious she was. The best view was in here. They had cameras on everything. Distance cameras, up close cameras, cameras inside the rocket itself. She could even see the astronauts inside. Oh, how she longed to switch places with them. The pilot especially. Flying that thing must be the biggest rush. 

They were starting the final countdown, and Carol was bouncing on the balls of her feet in anticipation, mouth open a bit in awe, bright blue eyes glued to the screens. Of all the people in there, she was the only one who always acted like a giddy child at this part. Everyone else got used to it, but Carol never could. 

“Three… two… one… launch!” 

And there it went, accelerating at massive speeds, forcing a great hunking piece of metal straight through the sky and into the beauty of space. At least, that’s what it should have been doing. Carol was so attached to the screen that she almost missed the sensor lights in the control room, flicking to red one by one. Then alarms started going off, and everyone in the room, who had just been getting ready to celebrate, ran back to work frantically, tense voices breaking through the alarms. 

The entire room went silent, and Carol’s breath caught as the shuttle exploded. 

Later on, Carol asked what had went wrong, what part had malfunctioned. The answer felt like a punch in the gut. There was nothing wrong with the ship. The pilot was the one who had screwed up.


	2. Invasion

“What do you think is in there?”

“As long as no one gets in there, who cares?”

“Wow,” Carol rolled her eyes, “We’ve got a real adventurer here.” The man stationed next to her didn’t respond, standing perfectly at position, eyes focused on the hallway before him. Carol wasn’t so perfect, probably because she’d been out of the military for too long. 

But what did they expect, when Uncle Sam just showed up at NASA one day and said they needed her back. 

“Dude. They have a Colonel and at Lt. Colonel guarding a door. That’s freaking grunt work. Whatever’s in there, it must be massive, and they’re hiding it in New York. So what do you think? My bet is that they recreated Captain America.” 

“With all due respect Colonel.” Ohhhh sassy. “Our orders are to guard this door, not debate what’s on the other side of it.”

A soft sigh came from the blonde’s mouth. “Eh. You’re probably right. Seems kind of silly to remake the guy now that they’ve found the real one.” This detail was going to be really boring. Something big was going down, she knew that much. Rumor from on high said that it had something to do with S.H.I.E.L.D., and those people didn’t deal with anything small. Maybe they’d discovered life on Mars or something. 

The curiosity was killing her, practically begging for Carol to just take a peek through that damn door. It would have been so much easier if he’d just wondered aloud with her, sating the urge, but no, she had been partnered with a stick in the mud. The dude was army, which probably explained it. But that just made it even more interesting, because why did they have high ranking officers from two branches of the military guarding this place? Were the marines and the navy running around too? What was behind that door?

Carol’s fingers were twitching, and she pulled them into a fist to stop herself. Don’t peek. Don’t peek. Don’t peek. Then a massive crash solved the problem for her. 

Her talkative buddy totally missed the important part, raising his gun and pointing it down the hallway without hesitation. Carol spun around instead. “It came from inside! Idiot.” So much for guarding the door, but it was too late to worry about that now. She kicked it open, and ran inside. 

It wasn’t a Martian. Nor was it Captain America 2.0. Frankly, it was just a mess. Just a massive machine, all metal and colorful buttons. The design wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen, and the metal looked almost like stone. But the most important fact was that it was currently sparking and smoking, thanks to the fact that someone had blown a massive hole through the roof. Whatever this thing was, someone wanted it bad. 

Something. Something wanted it bad. 

“Holy shit.” Carol froze for a moment, gun pointed at the intruder, but she couldn’t bring herself to fire, mouth falling open in shock. “I guess you guys don’t come in peace.” At least her mouth still worked. 

Yeah, it was an alien. No way a costume could look that legit. There were no whites in its slanted eyes, just green, combined with a nose that looked like someone smashed it in and lipless brown teeth. It was wearing armor, and pointing some sort of staff at her. It was ugly, she would have preferred her aliens little and green. To make matters even more fun, it had brought friends. 

Carol glanced upward, just for a millisecond, long enough to see that there was a whole damn army of the things. They were being invaded by aliens. Wish that little tidbit of information had made it into her mission briefing. 

That was when she started firing. 

The army guy wasn’t much of a wingman, Carol saw him fall out of the corner of her eye, but no amount of pushing let her get through to see if he was still alive or not. In the end, she just went with the fact that he wasn’t. So Carol Danvers was fighting the aliens on her own. At least she had a machine gun. 

But even those ran out eventually. 

It didn’t take long to reach her blaze of glory, her back pressed up against the machine, and a pile of aliens around her. Whatever this thing was, it better have been worth dying for. But Carol doubted it. With the amount of concrete currently laying on top of it, it was probably broken beyond repair. 

She tossed the empty gun to the side. “Come get me, bastards.” Anyone else would have laughed before they killed her, but Carol wasn’t sure they had the ability. They just started shooting. 

Carol dodged a couple, but it turned out that was enough, because they hit the broken machine instead. And that was enough to set it off. The thing started glowing. 

The aliens apparently knew what that meant, and they ran like hell, but Carol wasn’t so smart, turning around to look at it, shielding her eyes from the pulsing light, taking a few steps back, only to trip and fall over a corpse. She’d never seen anything like this. Maybe this thing was alien too. 

It got so bright that Carol couldn’t see, and then it started to get hot. That was when she finally figured it out. Better late than never. The thing was gearing up to explode. Her eyes were clinched shut, but the light still found its way past her lids, burning her eyes as she scrambled to find her feet, hoping to find her way out blind. 

Not shockingly, she didn’t make it. 

Carol felt it explode, but she didn’t feel it rip through her. No, something solid hit her, forcing her to the ground, but when arms wrapped around her, she knew that it wasn’t the machine. Nope. Someone was rescuing her. Like a freaking damsel in distress, not a war hero who had just single handedly killed a boatload of aliens. 

In that moment Carol Danvers wasn’t thankful she was still alive. She just hated herself. Hated that she couldn’t save herself. Because in this moment her father was right, she was just a little girl that needed a man to protect her. 

She wished she could stand up and be her own hero. 

That was when the explosion hit her. Every single inch of her body was burning, and it felt like it came from the man who was still holding onto her. 

Then the world exploded, at least that’s how it felt. Maybe the world was totally fine, and the universe had just contracted until it encompassed only Carol, her mysterious savior, and the fire that raged around her. People always talked about how they could feel pain all the way to their bones. The Colonel would have laughed at them now. The fire had gone through her bones, to the marrow and deeper, attacking every cell, taking the core of being that made up Carol Danvers, killing her and morphing into something different. 

Her whole body was burning, but somehow she wasn’t ashes yet.


End file.
